Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional Action

1. An Invitation to Participation

9 1 An Invitation to Participation A Summons The letter arrives in the mail. “Dear Citizen” it begins. You hold in your hand an invitation. Sure, it looks like an official jury summons, and it was probably not the invitation you were hoping to receive. Yet it is still an invitation—an invitation to participate in the American experiment of self-government. It is not every day that we get an invitation saying “come join your extended neighborhood—meet the postal worker, cafeteria chef, banker, professor, or truck driver down the block.” It is not often that you are asked to socialize with a randomly selected group comprising all the types of people who live in your city or town. And you can feel flattered that you have been invited. It means that you have not committed a felony1 (that anyone knows about), that you are mature enough to judge others,2 and that your community needs you. Of course, it might be 10 / An Invitation to Participation nicer if your “invitation” was gold-embossed with fancy lettering, rather than the dot-matrix copy that remains in some courthouses, but whatever the paper stock or font, it is an invitation that millions of Americans receive every year.3 And it’s only polite to accept. As you ponder the conflicts that the jury date poses with your schedule—work deadlines, family vacations, day care, and the like—remember that you have been invited in a role independent of those responsibilities. You were invited because you are a citizen, not a mother, father, daughter, employee, boss, or unemployed actor. Nothing you have accomplished or failed to accomplish is relevant to your service. The summons requires you to consider yourself in a new role distinct from the identity you have spent your life creating. The famous and not famous appear before the court in the same position . Even judges when called to jury duty in their own courthouses have no more power than does the ordinary layperson. You are simply a citizen—a citizen with an important responsibility. That responsibility is usually mixed with a bit of uncertainty . Uncertainty about the process. Uncertainty about the time commitment. Uncertainty about the expectations.4 This uncertainty is to be expected. There is an information imbalance in the irregular requirement of jury service. You have been asked to play a role in the justice system, but what role, for how long, and about what subject has not yet been decided. You might end up a jury foreperson in a scandalous civil trial, or an alternate in a petty criminal case, or never selected after hours of waiting in the jurors’ lounge. While uncertainty abounds, it is a responsibility that requires your physical presence. You have to get up, head to the courthouse, and see what happens. A jury summons is an invitation to participation. Jurors are asked to involve themselves in some of the most personal, sensational, and terrifying events in a An Invitation to Participation / 11 community. It is real life, usually real tragedy, played out in court. Jurors confront disturbing facts, bloody images, or heart-wrenching testimony.5 There is no way to hide when one is shown the blown-up, blue-tinged autopsy photograph of a dead man, or the results of some horrible accident involving a defective product. A jury may have to decide whether a man lives or dies, or whether a multimillion-dollar company goes bankrupt. A jury will have to pass judgment in a way that will have real-world effects on the parties before the court. Of course, before you get to the heightened emotion of trial, your participation may feel more like a trip to the local Department of Motor Vehicles—a lot of bureaucratic waiting, punctuated by seemingly inefficient systems for organizing the mass of people who arrive each day. Actually, it’s a pretty efficient process in most courthouses , but for the uninitiated, it might not seem that way. As you wait, look around the jurors’ lounge and observe the diversity of your fellow citizens. Almost every shape, form, and type of American sits around you. Some sit around discomforted by the waiting and frustration. Others seem to be looking forward to the opportunity to stay and serve. People are reading history books and comic books, people are knitting sweaters and writing computer code, people from all walks of life sit together...